


I Just Wanna Tell You How I'm Feeling, Gotta Make You Understand

by revenblue



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Crack, Heinz that is not how you seduce an ex to date you again, M/M, POV Third Person Omniscient, bad breakup AU, everyone knows Perry's secret AU, in which Heinz tries to serenade Perry like this is a romcom, mention of infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 12:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revenblue/pseuds/revenblue
Summary: There are many ways to win back an ex. This is not one of them.





	I Just Wanna Tell You How I'm Feeling, Gotta Make You Understand

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry.

The cool autumn night is dark, with a gentle breeze, and soon to be nowhere near as peaceful as anyone involved would prefer.

Anyone except one Heinz Doofenshmirtz, on his way to a house he wasn't supposed to know the location of, in a vehicle _not_ emblazoned with the logo for Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated for once. This, alas, will turn out to be the sole attempt at subtlety he would accomplish that night. And it's not even convincing. The O.W.C.A. surveillance agent watching the events unfold is facepalming from how blatant it is.

Finally, he pulls up at an ordinary yellow house in the suburbs, with the worst parking the street had seen since Candace Flynn's first disastrous attempt at parallel parking.

In case anyone's unsure, Heinz will be the cause of the disturbance. Or, as he would call it, the " _performance_ ". But for accuracy's sake there's no other word than "disturbance", as it very much will be disturbing the peace. And the unlucky audience.

He exits the van, collecting the supplies he'd left on the front seat beside him for easy access. The van he leaves unlocked, door wide open, keys still in the ignition, because it's so obviously worthless despite being in pristine condition that no one would dare touch it. Plus the threat of Heinz swearing revenge.

The back yard is, unfortunately for everyone, unlocked. He takes advantage of this, making his way through the gate and into the middle of the grass, in full view of a certain second-storey window that he _definitely_ is not supposed to know the location of.

For a moment, all is quiet. Then...

"Perry the Platypus!" he yells, tossing a fistful of gravel at the window like he's the hapless male lead of a romantic comedy. It didn't matter that there wasn't any gravel in the vicinity of this suburban house, he'd brought his own. Had to be _authentic_ , to a genre not based in reality in the slightest.

Unsurprisingly, Perry the Platypus refuses to answer. After all, how would his nemesis- Ahem. How would his _former_ nemesis find out where he lives, besides a job-threatening security breach?

Such a shame Heinz had happened to find out anyway, especially considering how they'd parted ways. It was a night neither of them would forget any time soon. Not for lack of trying, on Perry's part. He'd made an effort to erase his memory of discovering Pretendy the Practicepus was a stand-in for more than just _thwarting_ , to no avail.

Not disheartened in the slightest by the lack of response, Heinz tries again. "Perry the Platypus!"

The window opens. A young boy with vivid green hair pokes his head out, silently glaring down at Heinz. The family resemblance he shares with Perry is uncanny, despite the two of them not being biologically related in the slightest.

Alas, even the baleful look of judgement can't dissuade Heinz from his goal.

"Don't you lie to me, you hooligan! I know he's up there!" Heinz yells, before bursting into unusually loud and blatantly performative tears.

Another boy looks out the window with a frustrated yawn, running his hands through his messy bright red hair. "Go away, Doctor D! It's the middle of the night!"

Down on the grass, Heinz drops to his knees. "But-"

Ferb, the green-haired kid, raises an eyebrow. "We have school in the morning," he says, tone somehow disdainful despite the deadpan delivery. It's all in the eyebrows.

"But this is important!" Heinz wails. "I need to tell him how I feel!"

"He's not interested," the other kid, Phineas, says, and slams the window shut. The sound of it echoes with finality.

It's such a shame Heinz is chronically incapable of taking a hint. He turns to his supplies, pulling out the old battered boombox he'd acquired as a teenager, all those years ago, with an even more battered cassette tape inside it. This is to be the so-called "main event", to the displeasure of everyone around him.

He pushes play, and-

Nothing. The tape's around the wrong way. As it turns out, despite all his preparation, he'd somehow forgotten to do a test run with the boombox. Swearing under his breath, he hits eject and flips the tape over.

This time, when he presses play, the correct song blasts out through the speakers, albeit with a painfully crackly noise underscoring the whole thing.

> We're no strangers to love  
>  you know the rules, and so do I  
>  a full commitment's-

The window opens again, wrenched upwards with great force. Perry the Platypus himself sticks his head out, hatless and snarling, fur standing up to make him look ever-so-slighty larger.

There's no way Heinz could know this, but Perry had in fact heard the song three times that week alone. All for the sake of a "joke", as his superiors at the O.W.C.A. thought they were _funny_. No one else agreed, least of all Perry. Thus, as a result, he's singularly unimpressed with Heinz's shenanigans.

"Perry the Platypus!" Heinz cries, over the sound of the boombox trying to produce quality sound and failing horribly. "I'm sorry! I don't know what I was thinking."

Completely underwhelmed, Perry rolls his eyes. Didn't Heinz know there was a _reason_ Perry had broken up with him? Multiple reasons, even. Ones that can't just be wiped away with an apology and a musical number.

The answer, of course, is _no_ , no he did not.

So of course Heinz continues to whine, wilfully ignoring the pointed glare Perry is aiming at him. "I'll do _anything_! Please, Perry the Platypus, you have to give me another chance!"

Already sick of his screeching, Perry chucks a shoe at his head. One of Ferb's steel-tip sneakers, to be precise.

The watching O.W.C.A. agent records the moment for posterity, the graceful arc of the shoe as it glides through the air and into the side of Heinz's skull, in glorious slowmo. Perry will later request a copy for personal use.

Heinz falls to the his knees, sobbing in dramatic emotional anguish and genuine physical pain, while the backup dancers he'd hired file in behind him. Said backup dancers don't approve of his actions, but he always pays generously so they've decided it's easier to go along with whatever inane scheme he'd planned without questioning it.

"I didn't want to give you up, o-or let you down," he howls, somewhat matching the timing of the song. Not particularly closely, alas, but an attempt was made. "Or to run around and desert you. Didn't want to make you cry, or say goodbye, or tell a lie and-!"

Perry throws the other shoe.

It smacks Heinz right in the face, knocking him onto the boombox, which breaks under his weight. Even this isn't enough to stop him, however, as he sits up in the wreckage, grinning up at Perry. "Does this mean you want to fight me again?" he asks gleefully, completely misinterpreting Perry's actions. Sadly, this level of complete denial of the obvious is normal for him.

Knowing this, Perry holds firm. No matter what he does, no matter how much he tries to make things work, Heinz never changes. He's sick of the empty promises, sick of hoping things might work out _this_ time, sick of the disappointment when they inevitably don't. Never again.

Beside him, the boys stick their heads back out the window. "Just go already!" Phineas yells in exasperation, while Ferb continues to glare.

The backup dancers decide they've reached the end of what they're being paid for and stop mid-kickline. After all, they can't dance without music. Or at least, that's what they'll say if Heinz bothers to notice their disappearance and ask later. But he won't. Really, the reason they leave is mostly because they knew a lost cause when they saw one. Unlike, well...

"Come on, Perry the Platypus, remember all the good times we had? I miss those," Heinz pleads, clasping his hands together.

Perry narrows his eyes and points sternly at the gate, then slams the window shut. He remembers. Sometimes he even misses the good times, late at night when his thoughts keep him awake. But, after everything else Heinz has done, he can't go back. Not any more.

Caring only leads to heartbreak, he's learned that now.

Down below the window, on the lawn, Heinz crawls back to his miraculously-untouched vehicle with his metaphorical tail between his legs, even though that's a dog thing not an ocelot thing. Unfortunately, despite the clearest "no" Perry the Platypus could give him, he's not giving up. This is a retreat, not a surrender.

Peace descends over the suburbs. A precarious peace, what with all the improbable events that occur nearby on a daily basis, but peace all the same. After all, even geniuses with boundless construction skills have to sleep sometime. As do young boys with school in the morning. And if the two happen to be one and the same, well, it won't be the weirdest thing that's happened in Danville.

Fortunately, this peace means no midnight calls to O.W.C.A. HQ tonight. The watching surveillance agent sighs with relief, making a note of the incident for their superiors to deal to in the morning. 

And when Heinz comes back, because he _will_ , the boys will be waiting. As will their sister. After all, the Flynn-Fletchers look after their own.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretendy the Practicepus will never be the same again.
> 
> Title from... well... if you've read this far you can probably guess. [Never Gonna Give You Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ).  
> And, because that's not enough, I also listened to [Sandroll](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQoA_wjmE9w), [Never Gonna Wake Me Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvBRwSQ1mx0), and [I Will Give You Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKg_aoWifOA) while writing this :P  
>  ~~Don't judge me.~~
> 
> Incidentally, [the first version of this idea](https://cutewhitebunny.tumblr.com/post/170489480749/okay-so-im-finally-posting-the-new-version-of-one) came from me getting Sandroll in particular stuck in my head. I wrote _that_ back in November 2016 ie like 14 months ago, and uh... my writing's improved a lot since then.
> 
> Anyways, since this is _technically_ Perryshmirtz, albeit a bad breakup AU of it, I'mma casually link [my Perryshmirtz server](https://discord.gg/eEhRMq3) 0:-)


End file.
